Sunday, June 19, 2011

Random Entertainment News 6/19/11

- Evangeline Lilly (Lost) has joined the cast of The Hobbit for director Peter Jackson. She'll be playing a woodland elf. Also, Barry Humphries, best known as Dame Edna, will play the Goblin King, with the same motion-capture Andy Serkis uses as Gollum.

- Billy Bob Thornton will direct and star in the ensemble drama Jayne Mansfield's Car, co-starring Robert Duvall, Kevin Bacon, John Hurt and Robert Patrick.

- Thor Freudenethal (Diary of a Wimpy Kid) will direct Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Sea of Monsters, sequel to The Lightning Thief. Logan Lerman will return as Percy.

- Kate Winslet and Josh Brolin will star in Labor Day for director Jason Reitman (Juno, Up in the Air). It's a coming-of-age drama about a mother and son who give a stranger a ride, and that stranger turns out to be an escaped convict.

- Universal Pictures has staked out July 3, 2013, as the release date for Despicable Me 2.

- There've been many indications that JJ Abrams will not have Star Trek 2 ready for its current June 2012 release date and so Paramount is looking at other possible tentpole projects that could be done in time for next summer. One is GI Joe 2. Another is World War Z, which takes place ten years after a zombie uprising was successfully stopped. It'll star Brad Pitt, Ed Harris, Matthew Fox and Mirelle Enos (The Killing).

- Vanessa Minnillo is in and Jill Wagner is out as cohost of ABC's Wipeout.